Future Bits: Google's Machiavellianism — Defining Moment of 2008: Google's offer to help Yahoo fend off Microsoft's hostile takeover bid. — Google's response to Microsoft's bid for Yahoo may represent one of the most brilliant acts of corporate Machiavellianism in recent history.

Two Expressos show how Silicon Valley reinvents the familiar — Silicon Valley invented itself through sheer inventiveness. So when I recently received two e-mails minutes apart pitching something called Expresso, a thought flittered: Could this finally be the technology that delivers a jolt of caffeine over the Web?

The Rise of Cloud Agents — It was only this morning that we were lamenting about the lack of the perfect social tool when what did we stumble across but Twitchboard? No, no, it's not the perfect tool, silly, it's a Twitter app. Yet what it does is something that no other Twitter apps have done before …

Is Time Warner Having Second Thoughts About Bebo? — Most would agree that Time Warner overpaid when it bought social network Bebo back in March. Given the challenges faced by the company's online businesses since then, among them declining ad sales and the difficulty of monetizing social networks …

A Yule Log for your LCD — I confess I had completely forgotten about the Yule Log visualization for Windows Media Player, which originally appeared as part of the Windows Media Bonus Pack for XP back in 2002. Like most visualizations, it hadn't been updated in years and didn't work with newer Media Player versions.

THERE IS NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT. — Over at BoingBoing, Clay Shirky engages in a bit of self-congratulatory schadenfreude for predicting the collapse of the newspaper business model back in 1993. And no doubt: He was prescient. But like a lot of folks (many of them named Jeff Jarvis) …

Acer, Best Buy Slash XP Netbook Price to $299 — At ever-cheaper prices, netbooks are looking like a big holiday seller. But can it last? — Experts and PC industry insiders have long wondered whether bare-bones netbooks were too cheap for manufacturers' own good. — But don't tell that to Acer.

Verizon Wins ‘Cybersquatting’ Case — Verizon Communications Inc. said it has been awarded $33.2 million in a “cybersquatting” case against a San Francisco firm that registered Internet domain names purposely similar to the telecommunications giant's trademarks.

World Bank Admits Top Tech Vendor Debarred for 8 Years — For months, the World Bank has been stonewalling and denying a series of FOX News reports on a variety of in-house scandals, ranging from the hacking of its most sensitive financial data to its own sanctions against suppliers found guilty of wrongdoing.

Sun's Unwired Motherboard Plans — Cutting the wires doesn't just work on networking, it could also greatly increase CPU-to-memory communications. That's if Sun has its way. — Sun Microsystems is researching ways to make massive supercomputers even faster, including wireless connections between CPU and memory.

Microsoft kicks fake security software off 400,000 PCs — In the second month of a campaign against fake security software, Microsoft has booted the rogue application “Antivirus 2009” from almost 400,000 PCs, the company recently claimed. — December's version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool …

Blackberry 8900 release date... We've previewed this highly anticipated follow up to the uber popular blackberry curve. We've been gifted with a hands on video from our friends at crackberry.com who gave us a great walkthrough. Now, we have a HOPEFUL release date...February 18th.

Wireless Built the Notebook Boom — Yesterday's news that notebooks had overtaken PCs in the number of units sold last quarter owes a huge debt to Wi-Fi and a smaller one to 3G cellular networks. Without those Intel unwired commercials and images of folks surfing the web at Starbucks or sitting in parks …

Christmas presents? Let me check my e-mails first — Instead of switching off during the holiday season, owners of the device will check work messages before opening presents — Children may have to wait just a little bit longer than usual before ripping open their Christmas presents tomorrow morning …